Congratulations, you got this far. This means you are seriously thinking you may / could possibly / definitely will start performing.

If you want to happily remain doing the occasional shows as the opportunities present – and there is nothing wrong with that – then this last part probably doesn’t interest you. I’d suggest you are mistaken about that.

If you are wanting to earn money and get a slick show, one that you don’t have to feel stressed about, because you are doing it on a regular basis – full time or part time – then you MUST get excited about what follows.

Understanding the Internet is NOT AN OPTION

It is critical. There is some good news and some bad news, but not to keep you in suspense the good news outweighs the bad news. More on that soon …

What this marketing starter kit is more than making your transition from amateur magician to professional magician smooth and pain free. It’s about you putting down good roots to start this next journey and about putting a lot of the power back into your hands.

You should know by now that I am fairly pragmatic in the way I approach things: I favour the direct and practical way over the theoretical / ideological way anytime. So here’s the 3 easy ways I am going to get you going.

What the heck does that all mean?? It’ll make perfect sense in a moment.

1. Stop Everything You are Doing with Your Online Marketing Right Now

and invest some time to listen to my take on things. I am not an expert at online marketing. I have come to realise few are because there is really no absolute right way. The way the internet changes so fast puts pay to that.

What I am is someone who has done the hard yards, listened to many internet gurus (good and bad), paid my money to them in big sums, put in the hours and made a comfortable living using the internet as my main marketing tool.

I’ve been able to do this without using booking agents, without paying endless money on advertising and without the number #1 tool promoted by so many the sure fire way to double your bookings:   Get a rabbit.

I can share with you what I have done that has worked for me and what hasn’t and what I know never will. So that is why I say stop. You may be doing some things that will irrevocably harm you in your online and offline future.

2. I Will Filter the Noise For You.

What noise? The online chatter/drone/hub bub that makes you want to give up and say it is all too hard. Go type ‘create a website’ into the Google search bar and don’t expect to get much more than a few minutes change out of a week of research and you will have an impossibly large knot in your stomach wondering if you are making the right decision.

How can you possibly know which of the 20 Secrets to Success products, with their 7 Proven Strategies that will put ahead of the crowd is the right one?

Then, once I’ve got my website, why do I need to pay $300 then to have my website search engine optimised? They’re all telling me to do that too?

I know these questions all too well. These were the same questions I had.

Some people throw their hands in the air and say it’s all too hard. Sorry, you can’t afford the luxury to tune out of this. This is as important as everything you have learnt in the previous 4 modules. Probably more so. It does take hard work too, but then, you already knew that, didn’t you. You NEED to understand just how critical the internet is to your success or failure. It’s not enough to just have a website any more.

That’s just about it for the bad news. Here’s something to brighten your mood.

You are about to leverage (there’s that word again) everything you learn to promote your magic to put yourself in a position to apply this same knowledge to areas of your life outside of magic to potentially create multiple streams of income. This is a viable way of creating a comfortable living. There are magicians starting to do this. I know because it is exactly what I do right now.

Should you want, you are going to be able to combine magic and other areas of your life to create energy and enthusiasm for yourself when maybe you thought that was a thing of the past.

If you have a few years under your belt already, you are about to see that age and life experience can benefit you AHEAD of younger people.

We live in unique times. There is a window of opportunity simply because the information age and the internet are still trying to work themselves out. For you and me that spells possibility.

And no, this isn’t a cult I’m indoctrinating you into, neither is it a pyramid scheme marketing plan like Amway. I’ll go further and say that I won’t be asking for money from you.

I am just going to show you what I am doing to create an interesting and satisfying life for myself, show you how I am using the internet to do it and I hope encourage you to seize opportunities right in front of you.

The minimum you will get from this is a solid website for your magic shows. Then, the skills you will learn here to dominate your local magic market will let you capitalise on you existing knowledge base, and I hope let you go way beyond that. By doing this you can get closer to income proofing your future and being happy.

How? Give me some details you say. That is coming. Stick with me.

As magicians, we are brought up on instant gratification, that it works straight out of the box once we pay our $35 plus postage we can do miracles. That ends here. You are going to work your website out on paper first. The process is easy; it’s keeping your desire and ego on hold while you this brilliantly valuable first step that is going to be hard. You will thank me for making you do this.

I did many things wrong on my online journey but this is one of the things I did right. All the details are coming in the next lessons, but right now we have to cover that cryptic thing I was talking about earlier

3: Speaking to You With 2 Voices

This I guess is a lucky coincidence. Let me give you a bit of background.

In early 2013 I reached out to everyone who had subscribed to me via my free magic ebook ‘The Biggest Magic Secret of All’ and asked them what questions they wanted answered if they could sit down with for an hour or two.

I didn’t expect much. I was even irked by a feeling that maybe I was being presumptuous asking such a question. The result was very different. I received 33,000 words of hope and worry and anxiety. The result was this Build Your Magic Show course as how to put a show together was by far the biggest concern.

Following hot on it’s heels was how to market a show once you had one. My response to this was to plan for the creation of GetPaidToBeaMagician.com, a sister site to this one.

I threw myself into the production of this course and basically didn’t sleep for 6 months. On the 9th October 2013 I received an enquiry through my website from a magician in the UK. This is it ..

 

To be honest, I quickly looked at the links and just put it to one side as I was snowed under producing the BYMS content and doing shows. About a fortnight later I came up for a breather and was clearing out my inbox and felt I should reply. On second look at the links I found there was a real common ground between what we were doing.

I shot off an email, a day later we Skype chatted,  a week later we had logged hours of Skype time.  We found we had so much in common; our goals and our values aligned. Greater than that we found we had sort of arrived at the same point but we done things so differently online. One conversation led to the next and by the months end we had partnered up to create a new project, part Julian, part Ken, a bit of a Frankenstein’s Monster of ideas.

You may already know it, if not, let me introduce MagicianBusiness.com to you. A truly unique project on the magic landscape. I’m not sure when you are reading this, but if there are others like this out there, then this was certainly the genesis of the imitators.

What makes this so unique and you the greatest winner is that we are 2 children’s ‘ family entertainers who have created secure incomes for our families, but we have done it hemispheres apart in markedly different ways on markedly different journeys.

What isn’t different is our common view that we want to share with you exactly how we have done this, every nut and bolt detail, so you can choose what best suits you and replicate our success.

There’s one small thing I didn’t tell you, it’s free. Why?

I am loathed to quote Oprah but …

“The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work.”
— Oprah Winfrey

This is why we are giving our material free. There are no ‘real’ marketing secrets. It’s just process. Most of this process is already out there online anyway. If you don’t like a challenge then the bad news is it does take work.

Ken and I, through our own life paths, are at a stage where what we want most of is to try and make a real difference in people’s lives. We have to be able to make a business of this because we cannot live on air, we have to provide for our own families and it is important we give something back to our families too for the sacrifices they have made supporting us on this time consuming quest.

You can find all the details by visiting MagicianBusiness.com but right now YOU need to prepare for this new part of the adventure so I will be bringing Ken Kelly inside Build Your Magic Show to give you a head start on those outside.

Some of you may already know Ken from the BYMS Facebook group. He has about 3 times the magic experience that I do but he realises the value in continually educating himself. He was the FIRST person to join BYMS before I even realised he had done so.

So that’s what I mean by the power of 2 voices. I learn something every time we speak so you’d better ready yourself for a massive knowledge expansion heading your way.

In the next lessons we are going to get you prepped to create a killer website that will be right the first time and will put you ahead of the pack.

STOP.

Don’t Do Anything Until You Have Done These …

1. Stop posting anything and everything you wouldn’t want your dear sweet grandmother to read or see.

This is not a joke. It is critical. Every cleverly smutty comment you leave on the funny post that everyone is sharing, every negative comment you leave on a blog post when you were angry about something, every time you go online you are creating your reputation.

Reputation will be the powerful currency of the future, so says Rachel Botsman on her TED talk. She says reputation is the measurement of how much a community trusts you. Botsman says, “with every trade we make, comment we leave, badge we earn, we leave a trail of how well we can be trusted.”

2. Stop automating social media

To keep up with the volume of engagement required there  comes a tendency to automate your content or somehow try to trick the system to take some of this pressure of you. Once you go down that path you have set yourself up to be caught out and trapped by your own words.

3. Remove any sarcastic jokes

The great temptation: It is so easy to get laughs into your routine that you slip in a sarcastic gag that always gets a laugh. Don’t. This is all part of creating and protecting your reputation. The online and offline worlds cross over all the time now. You have to attend to both..

Plus, cheap laughs really are cheap because that’s what you end up getting paid.

Things have a way of biting you when you least expect it.

I remember one of my very early free shows at a beach resort. I used to tell the kids if they didn’t behave I would turn them into a toad. I thought this was very clever and great crowd control. A small boy about 4 years old burst into inconsolable tears. He cried and cried. This is a very big deal for a small kid with an imagination. That would be like a nightmare. I never recovered the show from that point. That’s what everybody talked about afterwards too.

Whether online or offline, think about every word that comes from your mouth or leaves your fingertips.

4. Claim Your Name – Make This a Habit

Like it or not, you need to create your Social Media footprint.

You do not need to be active on social media at this stage but you do need to create a habit of claiming your online real estate. These are the addresses that are naturally yours because of your name or your business. It costs you nothing but time to create accounts.

Start with these if you have not done them already.

If your name is taken, then use these sort of options:

julianmather1

julianmather01

julianmather001

Keep your name to the front. Keep it simple and uncluttered.

Remember, as you are now only posting things online that you are proud to put your name to, you do not need or want an avatar.

5. Do Not Buy A Domain Name Yet

If you absolutely feel you MUST then just don’t be surprised when you change it. It will not be the end of the world but just letting you know there is a lot to think about domain names and getting the right one for you.

6. Take Off Your Black Hat and Trade Up To a White Hat

There are two ways to do things online:

1. The organic, slower, credible way that builds trust. This is called ‘white hat’ tactics.
2. The fast manipulative way that almost always ends up failing least when you expect it. This is called ‘black hat’ tactics.

So if you are doing things like buying back links off Fiverr.com … stop right now. It will ONLY end in tears.

There will be so much more on this. At the moment you need to get your mindset in the right place. What do you want to be? A magician who leaves a mark or a magician who leaves a stain?

7. Start Collecting Testimonials NOW

Remember Lesson 12.1 in Module 1 … Never do FREE shows … always trade your time for testimonials and photo opportunities

Ask for a brief one-line testimonial. Email them now and say …

‘Great being part of your event today again … to be honest I have as much fun as everyone in the audience is having. Would you like to do it again next year? I’m up for it and can pencil in a rough date for you now. 

Right now, there is one simple thing you could do for me. Reply to this email with a short ( one line even) testimonial bout how I helped make your day success for the kids and their families. Don’t worry about making it perfect, just bang it out on the keyboard now and you’ll help me spread the positive magic experience with other groups. 

Thanks (Tom) for taking a few short moments to do this for me. Hear from you soon, Dan 

ps. If this somehow slips your mind, I’ll follow up in a few days time and jog your memory for you 

8. Remove Any Prices From Your Website Now.

Replace them with a phone number / contact form / an email address.

There is NO argument or discussion on this as you may read in forums. If someone you know tells you to keep pricing on your site, and they truly understand marketing and can back up their claim with data they have collected and studied, then keep prices on.

If not, then remove them now. You are literally sending away your best potential clients by having prices there.

There is a word that will become a central part of your lexicon:  ‘your list’ and  you will be depending on it in the future.

Start doing all of the above and remember your next part of the journey lies is mapped out for you at